Quick Take…Putin on DNC Hack: Nothing to See Here!

In an interview with Bloomberg, Russian President Vladimir Putin deflected blame for the DNC hack; "does it even matter who hacked this data?"

By NTK Staff | 09.02.2016 @8:35am

Before the G20 meeting this weekend, Vladimir Putin sat down with Bloomberg for a wide-ranging interview. When asked about the DNC hack – widely believed to come from the Russian government – Putin denied culpability but also said the source of the hack doesn’t matter:

“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?’’ Putin said in an interview at the Pacific port city of Vladivostok on Thursday. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.’’

The short answer is yes, it does matter. Of course, this denial is coming from the same Putin who has denieddocumented human rights abuses in Russia since he returned to power. He also annexed an entire region of a sovereign country and, for now, got away with it.

But back to the issue at hand: Russia – now, indeed, one of our biggest geopolitical foes – is probably behind the DNC hack, and may be behind recent hacks of U.S. voter databases in Illinois and Arizona.

This kind of technical interference in a U.S. election by a foreign power is unprecedented. So, despite Putin’s ‘nothing to see here’ approach, it does matter.